For months, officials at the University of Iowa have been saying that they would launch a Bias Assessment and Response Team this fall. Such teams exist at many other colleges and universities and typically use the acronym BART.

Many advocates for minority students have pushed for the creation of BARTs, and the Black Student Union at Iowa reviewed and approved the idea of starting one.

But on Thursday, the university's chief diversity officer, Georgina Dodge, announced a change of course. The university will not be unveiling a BART at the start of the academic year, she said. Rather, it will respond to criticism of the BARTs elsewhere by creating a model that would not in any way intrude on faculty members' academic freedom.

"We have seen that the ways BARTs are functioning at some other institutions are not effective, and we want to build a better BART," she said.